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Bureaucracy Breeds Identity Theft
By karen | February 17, 2009
After I managed to captured the woman who stole my identity, she was set free. A good finger pointing isn’t going to slow down the fastest growing crime 9 years and running. I have read frustrating after frustrating story from victims’ identity theft. Here’s another frustrating story giving example to our cities’ and country’s need for the legal system to start surrounding it self around identity crimes.
Mark Giordano, lives in Fishkill, New York. An identity thief, with Mark’s credit card, rented an apartment in San Francisco, California , signed up for utilities, and ordered pizza.
Giordano knows who the thief is, so you would think this would be an open and shut case, even if the likelihood of doing jail time is minimal. But while the SFPD is actually working on the case they are waiting to hear from Giordano’s local police authority.
Fishkill is so small and has only a part-time force, nothing yet has happened. Unfortunately, that’s typical in these kinds of cases, which are notoriously difficult to track down and prosecute.
Giordano said, “I’ve talked to the FBI, the Federal Trade Commission, Department of Treasury, the Secret Service, my congressman and the San Francisco police.”
So he took matters into his own hands and called the crook on the phone.
“He starts apologizing to me,” Giordano said. “He’s telling me how sorry he is and how he is going to make it right. He’s going to pay the bills.”
A week later Giordano got another bill. The crook had opened a Netflix account in his name.
So a frustrated Mark Giordano contacted the San Francisco Chronicle, explaining how he couldn’t get anyone to do anything about his identity theft issue. In fact, he recalls talking to various authorities who told him “our hands are tied.” Boy, have I heard that one so many times I lost count!
WAY TO GO SF CHRONICLE!! This is why it is so important we keep our papers alive in this country.
Apparently the authorities hands were untied after the story broke in The Chronicle. The next day Giordano got a call saying a SWAT team had broken into the SF Parkmerced apartment, arrested the alleged crooks and discovered some 50 other stolen identities. By arresting one criminal they saved many victims. This is a happy ending!
Story from C.W. Nevius, SF Chronicle Columnist (02/17/09), Identity theft victim traces himself to S.F.
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February 17th, 2009 at 10:56 pm
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